


of dragons and discoveries

by adverbialstarlight



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Dragon!Keith, Dragons, M/M, Mage!Lance, Mutual Pining, Old Fic, Pre-Relationship, Quests, Zine piece, ish, it's just about dragons man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22975477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adverbialstarlight/pseuds/adverbialstarlight
Summary: Keith and Lance go on a mini quest to retrieve an object from the Eastern Mountain, but unforeseen danger (and perhaps something else) lies ahead of them.My piece for the Across Realities Klance Fantasy Zine
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 82





	of dragons and discoveries

**Author's Note:**

> hi, this was my fic for Across Realities: A Klance Fantasy zine, a zine that i modded last year. it's time for posting pieces so here's my collab with the lovely Allexche, whose art with this fic you can find [here](https://twitter.com/Allexche11/status/1231632009929330693). enjoy!

As a wizard, Lance found himself walking through the forest to find some magical object more often than not. He trudged down the familiar path, humming quietly to himself as he went. And then Keith showed up.

“Hi.”

“Gah!” Lance nearly fell off the log as he turned, arms flailing before two hands stabled him. He leaned into them but glared at his familiar.

“Whoops,” Keith said, voice not apologetic in the slightest.

He was shifted into his human form with the ghost of a smile on his lips. Keith’s eyes were an unnatural amethyst, one of the few things he retained in this form, and Lance caught him staring into them more often than not. After a moment, he stepped out of Keith’s hold.

“You really need to stop sneaking up on me like that,” Lance grumbled. 

“Or maybe  _ you  _ need to stop falling into rivers.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “It’s not a river, it’s a creek, there’s—You know what, whatever. C’mon, I’ve still got work to do.” He continued across the creek and jumped onto the bank.

“What’re you doing up anyway?” Keith asked. “Isn't it pretty early?”

“Getting some weird crystal from the Eastern Mountain for a new spell. It may rain a bit later so I’m getting a head start,” Lance explained.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “The Eastern Mountain is a pretty long hike from town, can’t you just use a substitute?”

“That’s what I thought,” Lance said, rolling his eyes. “She got super stingy about it when I asked so I’m just gonna get the stupid crystal.”

“Isn’t that kind of weird?”

Lance hummed and shrugged. “I mean a substitute crystal would defeat the purpose of the job, which is figuring out what the spell does, so I dunno. It’s still better than making another stupid love charm.”

They didn’t speak much in the next few minutes. Lance quietly grinned to himself every time Keith went ahead a few steps and held a branch out of the way or flicked away a bug for him. He’d never admit it out loud before, but somewhere between the bickering and teasing and eventual friendship, Lance had fallen head over heels in love with Keith.

Perhaps it was strange considering he was a human and Keith was a dragon, but Lance hardly cared. Keith was sweet and passionate behind his broody exterior, loyal and funny in ways Lance wouldn’t have expected him to be.

When they approached the end of the trail, Lance stared up the rocky mountainside then to Keith. “Any way you’d be able to grow a bit and give me a lift with those wings of yours?” he joked.

Keith rolled his eyes. “Can’t you just climb up? I thought you loved that sort of thing.”

“I mean yeah, but it’s early and that takes too long,” Lance whined. “If you flew me up, it would only take like ten seconds.”

“You drastically overestimate my abilities,” Keith said flatly. “That’s fifty feet of rock and against the wind. I’m not your indestructible chauffeur, Lance.”

Still, they both knew he would’ve done it anyway. Lance wasn’t sure if it was their newfound friendship or something else, but it was rare that Keith said no to him these days. Not seriously, anyway. He had Keith’s unwavering trust, and Keith had Lance’s.

Keith closed his eyes and a faint red glow began to encase him, growing brighter until a dragon was in the place where Keith once stood. His scales glistened and his horns and claws seemed even sharper under the sun, and Lance was in awe, never quite used to the transformation.

In this larger, temporary form, Keith was a bit smaller than most dragons that Lance had encountered before, but no less intimidating. Keith leaned down, beckoning for Lance to hop on. WIthout hesitating Lance did, swinging his leg around as he murmured a small spell to keep himself firmly on Keith’s back.

“Alright, ready,” he told Keith once secure. Lance felt the muscles in Keith’s back and wings begin to work and in a moment, they were off, soaring vertically into the sky and towards the peak.

The wind was strong and cold against his face, but Keith did not slow. They continued moving upwards, and soon enough the cave came into sight. It was more of a hole in the middle of the mountain with a foot of rock for one to stand outside of it, but Lance knew it was the right place. The picture in his book looked almost identical, down to the small sagging tree to the left of the cave and the large boulder sat precariously over the entrance.

Lance leaned down and tapped Keith’s horn lightly. “It’s there,” he shouted over the wind.

Keith didn’t do anything to confirm he heard Lance but began to slow down. When they reached the cave, he let Lance hop down then shrunk down into his regular size. He took one look at the dark, musty cave, then turned back to Lance.

That look was basically a silent, “Lance, you are a complete and utter dumbass and I regret even knowing you.” If he were in his humanoid form, his eyebrows would be raised judgmentally, and Lance would be offended. Though since he wasn’t, it was just cute.

Lance reached out and patted Keith’s head like he would a cute dog, grinning when Keith glared. “Thank you, Keithy.”

“I could collapse this entire mountain on you right now,” Keith replied. As if to prove his point, he shifted into his humanoid form, raised a hand, and let a baseball-sized stone fall from the cave.

Lance’s amusement only grew. “But you wouldn’t,” he said confidently, winking when Keith didn’t reply. “Let’s get this over with.”

He pulled a light crystal from his pocket. It sputtered to life as he muttered the incantation, casting the dark cave in a dim glow. Lance glanced at Keith—he was doing that more and more these days, he had a feeling it would bite him in the ass soon—then started down the path.

After a few bends and turns, they approached a small chamber with a purple gem floating on a rocky pedestal at the center of the room. Lance assumed it was the crystal he’d come for. Before Keith could say anything about possible traps, he stalked forward hastily. He wasn’t a fan of caves, the sooner they left, the better.

Despite the extra light from his lightstone, Lance’s foot caught on something and he fell, landing on his hands and knees, directly in front of the pedestal. The ground beneath him began to crack, deep golden light illuminated the cave.

Lance scrambled back in alarm. His head whipped to Keith, whose face was pale. “Uh, Keith, do you know what’s happening?”

“This is  _ really  _ bad,” Keith muttered. “Lance, I haven’t been entirely honest with you. My true form is… not something I ever intended for you to see, but there’s no other way now.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you just tried to take the heart of the Eastern Dragon and it’s pissed off. I would’ve stopped you if I knew  _ this  _ was the crystal. But I guess it’s too late now. When I transform, you need to run and get the hell out of here.”

Lance’s brows furrowed. “Are you kidding? If a big angry dragon’s about to annihilate everything in here, you’re not fighting it by yourself. You know I can help.”

“And usually I would let you, but this isn’t a normal dragon, it’s a cardinal dragon. Please just trust me.” Keith’s eyes were unusually panicked, though there was also a hard set of determination in his eyes.

Before Lance could decide on what to do, the floor broke completely and he was thrown back into the wall.

“Get down!” Keith shouted. A dark cloud of smoke encased him as he transformed this time, thickening until Lance couldn’t see through it.

The light from the ground grew brighter as well, encasing the floor as a new dragon broke through the stone, a large, golden serpent. As Keith predicted, it wasn’t too happy when Lance met its eyes. The dragon let out a growl and slithered towards him.

Before it could get too far, a large wing came out to shield him. He looked up with wide eyes to see a new dragon where Keith had stood, as large as the other and twice as angry.

Keith’s true form.

It was nothing like the cute, abnormally small dragon Keith had led him to believe was his natural form. And right away he knew, just from a glance at his unusually large wings, exactly what he was. A cardinal dragon like the Eastern Dragon. Which one he was though, Lance wasn’t sure.

After a moment, he scrambled out of the way, near the opening but close enough that he could still see what was happening.

When the Eastern Dragon got its first successful strike at Keith, Lance grimaced. There had to be something he could do to help. But what good was a wizard with nothing but his wand and a crystal against one of the four cardinal dragons?

Cardinal dragons—including  _ Keith _ , Lance realized with some shock—were the most powerful creatures on land. The only way to gain any advantage over one was by stealing its heart-stone.

Lance’s gaze flitted back to the pedestal across the cave where the crystal sat, unharmed a few feet away. He didn’t think about it too long, the ground was unstable beneath his feet but this was his chance to help Keith.

With one more glance to the two dragons, Lance inhaled shakily then darted away from the wall, making a beeline for the pedestal. The ground shifted beneath his feet, tripping him and scattering loose stones all around and into his exposed arms, but Lance didn’t dare stop.

It felt like he watched the next few moments through a screen. Out of sheer luck, he reached the platform. But as he reached for the crystal, the tail of the Eastern Dragon swept his feet from beneath him. Lance stumbled backwards, just about to fall into one of the deeper crevices in the ground. He fell forward instead when one of Keith’s wings righted him again. Lance nearly impaled himself on the crystal but grabbed it, cradling the gem to his chest as he rolled off to the side.

When he looked up, he saw the Eastern Dragon collapsed a few feet away in a limp pile, a result of Keith’s sharp claws. It let out a weak roar and the light in the crystal began fading. The dragon was dying, Lance realized with a jolt.

The walls began to shake and crumble, and the golden light grew even brighter. Before Lance could react, a large claw scooped him up and he was flown out of the cave. Shards of geodes and rock fell from the ceiling, none of them getting close enough to Lance but some crashing into Keith. Still, he didn’t slow until they were outside and far away from the falling mountain.

Lance was gently dropped on the grass and Keith transformed into his human form, leaving behind his usual red glow instead of the smoke from his last transformation. Keith crouched next to him, brows furrowed. “Lance, are you alright?”

“What just happened,” Lance muttered in lieu of a proper response.

Keith grimaced sheepishly. “It’s a long story, I swear I’ll explain everything later,” he said. Before Lance could respond, he moved forward and kissed Lance’s cheek before pulling him into a tight embrace. “Thank you for getting us out of there.”

“Of course,” Lance squeaked. “Let’s just go home for now, yeah?”

Keith leaned back and gave him a small, radiant grins that made Lance’s heart seize in his chest. “Yeah,” he said, “let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> that's a wrap! thank you to everyone who participated and supported this zine, it was a piece of work but i'm glad it went well. not sure if this entirely reflects my writing anymore as it was written in november, but hey it's still fun. thanks so much for reading and VLD fandom i'll see you the next time i can post an old zine piece.
> 
> catch me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/adverbialnouns) or [tumblr](http://adverbialstarlight.tumblr.com)


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